[HN Gopher] Snowcraft - Building a Lego Snowfort from giant Lego...
___________________________________________________________________
Snowcraft - Building a Lego Snowfort from giant Lego snow-bricks
Author : mikerg87
Score : 172 points
Date : 2024-01-20 01:09 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.verandavikings.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.verandavikings.com)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I did something similar a few years back with a cardboard box I
| found in the park! It held up surprisingly well while I tried to
| build a mighty fort - but before I could start building a roof,
| we got too cold and I had to bring the kiddo inside.
|
| I miss big snowfalls.
| ghayes wrote:
| I'm really surprised the snow bricks hold together so well. I
| wonder what the optimal conditions are for forming snow
| balls/bricks/men.
| mindslight wrote:
| Reading this gave me a related idea for a 3D FDM printer that
| lays down water. Maybe just a floating head suspended by ropes
| from three different trees. Perhaps three base stations on the
| ground for more accurate positioning. It would only work when it
| was really cold out. But it would be pretty neat to play with
| printing some kind of crazy human-scale structure/sculpture, and
| not have to worry about what you're going to do with it when
| you're done.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Need to figure out how to keep the source of the water from
| freezing.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I think if you keep it moving, you should be able to be ok.
| mindslight wrote:
| I was thinking the deposition rate would be high enough that
| the flow of tap water would suffice. The more important goal
| would seem to be getting the water to a steady colder
| temperature so that it freezes consistently soon after it
| comes out. It would be nice to be able to augment the feed
| with snow too. Maybe an open tank, a circulation loop to the
| printing head, variable valve for the tap water inlet, and
| then perhaps a waterfall-based heat sink and/or a boiler loop
| depending if the whole setup still needs to lose or gain
| heat.
|
| I've also got to wonder if dribbling water would be the best
| type of print head, as opposed to say a pressurized nozzle
| that would make more of a fanned out spray.
| klyrs wrote:
| Set your hothead to 1deg?
| swader999 wrote:
| Icebox igloo tool helps build a geodesic shaped igloo much like
| a 3d printer with all types of snow.
| https://grandshelters.com/icebox-igloo-tools/
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Hmmm... 2 x 2 bricks? (Guess the Lego storage bin imposes that
| style brick.)
|
| I want to see them try 2 x 4 bricks though. Much overlap.
| andai wrote:
| In the last photo, there's what appears to be a red 2x4 brick
| mold
| neilv wrote:
| These can be awesome fun to build and to play in. Just a safety
| note...
|
| If you build snow&ice structures, keep in mind that some can be
| dangerous for young kids who _later_ come across this very
| compelling structure.
|
| Especially igloo/cave/house, or other structure that can
| otherwise collapse atop small ones.
|
| Even if structurally sound when built, it can change rapidly over
| time, due to melting, snowfall, and play.
|
| If you can't check it frequently, to make sure that it's not in a
| state that can collapse and result in tragedy in a matter of
| minutes, then you probably want to disassemble it (and spread it
| out).
| izend wrote:
| I believe this is why my grade 2 class in Montreal was shown
| this famous Quebec movie
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dog_Who_Stopped_the_War where
| the movie ends with a child dying in the collapsed snow fort.
| neilv wrote:
| US schoolchildren were shown Disney's film "Follow Me, Boys",
| which seems to be about a wholesome youth group, who build a
| dangerously unsound clubhouse... then arm themselves, to
| fight off government aggression.
|
| (This formative message could explain a lot. I prefer
| Quebec's snow safety message.)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4dHmLu07HY
| klyrs wrote:
| When and where? I grew up in the US and never saw that.
| neilv wrote:
| That YouTube clip is from 1990 broadcast TV in a major
| northern coastal city market (Portland, OR).
|
| Around that time was also the Disney Channel, which many
| parents of young children would get for their cable TV
| package, for presumed kid-safe shows, and which showed
| many old Disney movies, including this one.
|
| Of course not everyone has seen it, but a lot have, maybe
| especially in households that prioritized exposure to
| "family-friendly" TV/movies.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I have not heard of this. Ive also not heard a reference
| to Portland as major northern city. As soon as I read
| that I assumed US NE coast.
|
| Why not western ?
|
| Also when you said "us schoolchildren were shown" you are
| directly implying this movie was (mandatory) shown in
| schools which based on your reply, is not what happened.
|
| 'US children' and network TV would have sufficed for your
| point.
|
| Honestly your writeup feels purposefully dramatic.
| neilv wrote:
| I think I should've stopped commenting after the first
| note about safety.
| klyrs wrote:
| Ah, okay. When you said "schoolchildren" I interpreted
| that to mean that the movie was being shown in schools.
| teekert wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands, at my school, we had to watch "Die
| Welle" (German title, English: "The Wave") [0]. Where a
| whole school learns how easy it can be to start following
| Hitler 2.0 en masse.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(1981_film)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Unfortunately not enough people understood that movie.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qlBC45jk3I
| Aeolun wrote:
| The synopsis on wikipedia seems to say the dog dies?
|
| Which given the name "The Dog Who Stopped the War" seems
| likely?
| antx wrote:
| No child dies in the movie:
|
| > Marc's dog Cleo comes after her owner, and one of the
| fortress walls collapses, killing her. The war ends, as
| both sides help bury her.
| fifilura wrote:
| I have mixed opinions about that.
|
| It is true that there is proof of kids dying when snow caves
| cave in.
|
| At the same time it is also a part of this ages overprotection
| of kids. Along with children not allowed to bike alone or play
| near a lake.
| soperj wrote:
| We do this with our recycling bins, it doesn't look like lego,
| but you can stack it a lot nicer than what they've got in their
| pictures.
| jader201 wrote:
| Sort of related, we bought for our kids when they were young a
| set of Brik-a-Bloks. [1]
|
| They're basically plastic 2x2 tiles that can be assembled into
| almost any structure you can think of (limited by the number of
| tiles you have).
|
| They (we!) loved making forts and tunnels with them.
|
| Just last week, one of my sons and his friends broke them out
| when playing nerf guns. He's 16.
|
| It's such a shame they stopped making them (maybe they were too
| expensive). They were even hard to find when I got them several
| years ago. Someone should really make something like these again.
|
| [1]
| https://gofatherhood.com/2010/02/review_fun_huge_building_bl...
| bcraven wrote:
| This looks close to Quadro:
|
| https://quadroworld.com/en
| jader201 wrote:
| Yeah, sort of, except Brik-a-Bloks allow you to build
| enclosed structures, so it feels more like a fort.
|
| But Quadro would still allow you to use sheets, etc. to
| complete the fort look.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Quadro has "tiles" you can use to make forts like that too.
| Source: my childhood.
| fercircularbuf wrote:
| You have a wonderful blog!
| dathinab wrote:
| be careful you have referred to non-Lego produced bricks as Lego,
| Lego might now sue you /s
|
| jokes aside they won't as it's good PR, they are very peculiar
| about how they selectively enforce their trademark in media
| articles
| jacquesm wrote:
| Technically speaking they provided the mold, so it's a derived
| product at worst, and the evidence will melt away before the
| lawsuit gets underway.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| This seems very unstable and unsafe. Collapsed snow forts can
| kill..
| epiccoleman wrote:
| One of my best college memories:
|
| I went to school at Ohio University, which is in Athens, OH - the
| Southern part of the state. Snowfall was pretty rare down there,
| we p probably only got one good one a year.
|
| I was also in a fraternity - a source of lots of good times and
| also some bad ones. But most importantly for this story, it meant
| that I knew about 50 different guys on campus.
|
| In my senior year we got a pretty awesome fall of packing snow,
| and the house where I was living had a big parking lot as
| basically its backyard, which served as parking for 12-15 cars
| for nearby houses. Classes were cancelled.
|
| So, that morning me and the other couple guys who lived in my
| house put on our best approximation of snow appropriate clothes,
| and went outside to the parking lot to build a fort. We starting
| making bricks with our recycling container, which was about the
| size of a 44qt storage tub. Our goal was to make an igloo big
| enough for a circle of about 15 of us to sit, so our first layer
| needed something like 30 blocks.
|
| Time went on, and various other bros starting showing up. By the
| end of the day, we had 20 young dudes shoveling snow into those
| recycling totes. Even with that amount of workers, it was slow
| progress. The fort was humongous! But after working for a few
| hours, we had a circle about 10-12 feet in diameter with walls 4
| feet high.
|
| At that point our resolve to build an actual igloo had crumbled,
| and we were running out of easily accessed parking lot snow, so
| we compromised, and threw a big white tarp over the whole thing.
| Just like that, we had our giant fort, roofed over (and hey,
| safer too).
|
| It was an all day job to get that far, and the rewards were worth
| it - we sat out in the fort with frozen asses, drinking very cold
| beer and filling it up with pot smoke, laughing and singing and
| telling stories. It was a genuinely magical few days, it felt
| like building that thing together had broken down some cliques
| and brought our group of dudes together. Almost every brother
| stopped by at least once.
|
| It didn't occur to me until later that that was probably the last
| time in my life all the conditions would line up to build
| something that large out of snow. How often do you find a huge
| parking lot, covered in packing snow, and 20 strapping young lads
| with nothing better to do than listen to some nerd telling them
| where to put it?
|
| Good times.
| deadbabe wrote:
| This sounds like a nice way to close out a chapter of life that
| will never be relived.
| mgaunard wrote:
| That's not how you're supposed to use lego. You're supposed to
| stack them up using the bumpy bits to maintain good alignment --
| I wouldn't expect the fit on hand-made snow bricks to be
| sufficiently tight and the material to be sufficiently elastic to
| enable them to stick to each other (though you could get them to
| stick by getting some ice to form).
|
| But it looks like the bricks themselves aren't hollow like
| they're supposed to be, and that they can't even be stacked to
| build a structure that's even remotely level or structurally
| sound.
|
| Clearly this is "lego" in name only.
| chrisjh wrote:
| The word Snowcraft just brought me back to my childhood. I loved
| playing the Snowcraft Shockwave game circa 2001 (?)
|
| I found a version of it on Archive.org [1] and a mirror on Github
| [2] that shockingly run perfectly!
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/snowcraft_game [2]
| https://github.com/seanpm2001/Snowcraft
| smeej wrote:
| Is it just me or wouldn't this actually work better with a flat
| box than a Lego-shaped one?
|
| Unless you're somehow driving corresponding holes into the
| _bottoms_ of your bricks, what advantage do the pips on top
| provide? If anything, they seem like they 'd make it less stable.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Not just you. Was disappointed to see the use of the 2x2 rather
| than a 2x3 and also no indents in the base. The structures made
| look precarious at best.
| doug_durham wrote:
| Great idea, but the writing style of the blog grates on my like
| nails on a chalkboard.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-20 23:01 UTC)